The Jealous
by PuppetMaster55
Summary: The signs had always been there, but nobody had been able to recognize them until it was too late.


Jazz had wanted to help Danny hunt ghosts. It had been a simple enough concept, only... she wasn't any good at it. Her aim was terrible; she was too loud; she didn't listen; she rushed into dangerous situations. Jazz was further from a ghost hunter than even their father.

"Jazz, what? Why- why did you do this?!" Danny couldn't breathe. The air was leaving his lungs but his chest felt like it was wrapped in a giant rubber band that kept him from inhaling.

"I want to help you fight ghosts, Danny," was Jazz's reply, a huge smile on her face as she looked at him expectantly.

* * *

The signs had always been there, hiding in plain sight, beneath stacks of psychology books and towers of books on ghosts. Jazz had taken a sudden, renewed interest in their parents' work; asking for references to certain articles or ectobiologists, scientists in the spectral sciences that their parents knew and respected. When asked about it, she waved it off, saying it was for her thesis paper.

"Ghost envy is a rare subject to cover; I could make psychiatric history if I learn enough about it to find a way to cure it!"

But then the papers gave way as Jazz started taking more of a technical interest in ghost hunting, learning about the exact nature of a ghost, along with the genetic make-up that was a ghost.

"It just shouldn't be possible for someone to be literally half-dead, Danny. Aren't you even curious what is it about you that makes you part-ghost?" had been her excuse at the time.

"Not really; I mean, I just- Look, can we not talk about this? Please?"

And that had been that last of it (although he'd later been informed by Sam and Tucker that Jazz had been asking them how Danny had gotten his ghost powers; Sam flat-out said she was keeping his secret, but Tucker had denied a bit too quickly and vehemently). So it had become 'out of sight, out of mind'.

Until Jazz had appeared in front of him, her hair flowing in the nonexistent breeze as she bobbed in the air, and the biggest grin she could possibly have plastered to her face. She was bone-white, and so still Danny almost considered her a life-sized china doll; she was wearing one of their mom's jumpsuits, and her entire body was see-through – while he was looking directly at her, he was also staring at the _Hartman_ spaceship blueprints hanging on his wall.

"I wasn't any help before, but I can help fight ghosts _now_, right?" Jazz's smile stretched further, and Danny thought he heard the sound of glass cracking.

"I– Jazz, what–" Danny coughed, trying to get air into his lungs and he tasted bile. The wastebasket he kept by his desk was commandeered into the receptacle for the contents of his stomach, and yet he still _could not_ breathe. "Where – where did you l-leave y-yours-s-self?"

He could barely get the words out, he was so starved for air.

"Myself?" Jazz didn't seem to understand the question, her head cocked to the side. The smile was still on her face, unmoving.

"Your– your–" Danny gulped down as much air as he could, feeling the invisible rubber bands wrapped around his chest and lungs scream as they were stretched beyond their limits. "Your body. Where is it?"

"Oh!" Jazz nodded, but still the smile didn't vanish; neither did the dead, glassy look in her eyes. A single arm creaked outwards, pointing down. "Where else, silly?"

Oh. Right.

Danny felt himself go intangible, and before he knew it, he was down in the lab.

The first thing he noticed was the smell. Urine and feces rankled the air, and made it thick and slimy and like burning acid in his nostrils. By instinct he gasped, and a mouthful of the disgusting air was pulled into his mouth, sending Danny heaving against the floor.

Just like the ghost up above, this Jazz was also wearing a blue jumpsuit. _Unlike_ the Jazz in his room, however, this one had purple, waxy skin. Almost without thinking, Danny reached out and tentatively touched her cheek; the skin didn't feel like wax, nor did it easily give way. The goggles had fallen loose, the eyes having sunk into the skull; her lips were a pale purple-blue.

Jazz was laying dead at the foot of the Ghost Portal, and Danny could do nothing to fix it.

He was the hero, he _saved_ everyone; that was how it worked, how it was _always_ meant to be. And yet...

He couldn't save Jazz.

Danny started gasping, coughing and retching against the stink of the loosed bowels, as he picked up the partially-stiff body of his sister, pulling her close as tears fell from his eyes.

_Freakshow has ghost envy_, she had said once, in a forgotten timeline. _Use psychology._

So he had used psychology, and Freakshow had done exactly as expected: he had died and become a ghost.

Jazz had had ghost envy, and she had used psychology.

And now she was dead.


End file.
